Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival
Much has been made in recent years of the “immersive” qualities of two war films, Dunkirk and 1917, which aimed to throw spectators into the chaotic tumult of battle—all the better to feel the tremor of gunfire, smell the gunsmoke and mud, and sense for themselves the breathtaking fear of combat. Molly Manning Walker’s first feature film, How To Have Sex, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival Friday, doesn’t advertise itself as immersive or a war film—the film centers on three British teenage girls heading to Crete for a hedonistic summer break—but it is in fact both.
As the film begins, our little platoon of vacationing soldiers are heading into battle with their spirits high: in Crete, this squadron of mouthy, boozy girls hope to do combat in pool parties and on the dancefloor, and vanquish some boys with whom to lose their virginity. Their weapons and armor: glitter and make-up, dresses so skimpy you could barely blow your nose in them, veritable gallons of cheap alcohol, and (most important of all) an affected bravura to see them through the whole shebang. Their only weakness: their gender.
In these opening scenes, Manning-Walker shows a great vivacity of spirit, ably seizing something spunky and engaging about these three young women still in the thick of high-school studies. If the actors’ performances are a smidgeon too forced in these early vignettes—which involve a great deal of whooping, singing, dancing, puking, shouting and falling—they still conjure up a close-knit squad with an earnestly schoolgirlish love for one another and some minor, low-simmering tensions.